Slashdot Mirror
OS X Update Officially Kills Intel Atom Support
bonch writes "After apparently disabling and then re-enabling support for the Atom chipset in test builds of their 10.6.2 update, Apple has officially disabled support for the chipset in the final update. This makes it impossible for OSX86 users to run 10.6.2 on their Atom-based netbooks until a modified kernel shows up."
I wonder if the recently launched Dell Zino could have been a motivator? http://www1.euro.dell.com/uk/en/home/Desktops/inspiron-zino/pd.aspx?refid=inspiron-zino&s=dhs&cs=ukdhs1
I RTFA, and there's no acknowledgement by Apple of what they have done or why they have done it. So the update does not "officially" break Atom support, it just breaks Atom support.
It's more about "user experience" than anything else. They don't want to allow OSX to run on anything other than their hardware, because some cheap chipset might make the whole thing malfunction and users would be fast to blame apple for a bad product... Even though it would be the user at fault for not respecting the hardware specifications...
That's a policy that have been enforcing for a long time now.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Well thats a load of crock, now isnt it?
Apple makes money on Hardware and software as a bundle.
Hackintoshes threaten this money making opportunity.
I'm not concerned with it, because I don't plan on running OS X on anything other than an expensive computer sold by apple. And since I have no desire to spend on such a frivolous thing, the plans happily sort themselves out.
The user experience Apple truly cares about is the one where the user pays apple a large sum of money. Everything else merely facilitates this.
Any other company and yes, they would be blamed.
Maybe if "any other company" had sold the product explicitly with Atom support and then reneged on that promise.
AFAICT the argument from the whiners is "Even though OS X is explicitly sold with strings attached which make it hard for me to legally build a hackintosh, it shouldn't be because I don't like it and any attempt to enforce such strings, no matter how feeble such an attempt may be, is nasty!"
>> "Free" software people won't touch Apple with a long pointed stick. It's even more closed and unfriendly than MS.
You do realize that OS X comes bundled with 100's of 'free' open source utilities/apps, right?
I'm not judging the legitimacy or morality of their actions; I just know slashdot, and if any other company had done something like this they'd be excoriated here.
The problem is the Atom supports a similar instruction set to the standard processors.
Dropping support in this case means they are adding explicit code designed solely to prevent use on a processor the OS would otherwise work with.
If Microsoft modified Windows 7 64-bit edition to BAN support for AMD 64-bit processors, and therefore encourage users to utilize only Microsoft Approved or Microsoft Manufactured hardware that utilizes Intel microprocessors.
Microsoft would be in court, at the wrong side of a lawsuit, pretty fast...
Again: it's not about hardware vendors not supporting a chip.
It's about hardware vendors adding code specifically designed to prevent use of a chip that otherwise works just fine.
Hackintosh users can live without the 10.6.2 update. This doesn't really break anything, it just prevents netbook users from having the latest set of OS patches between now and whenever the community finds a workaround.
One of the more uninformed posts I've read today.
Apple owns or participates in a HUGE number of open-source projects.
You haven't read through the previous comments, have you? I see far more people (at least at this point) complaining about the anti-apple comments than anti-apple comments...
Now, with that said, I think it's genius what they are doing from a business perspective... Making the software an beacon to their hardware profit center. From a moral perspective, I don't care what they do, cause I'm not spending $3k on a MacBook Pro... OSX may be amazing, but I am quite happy with Ubuntu, so this news has no consequence for me. If you want the freedom to do what you choose, use a free OS (Linux flavors, BSD flavors, etc). If you want the polished yet non-free OSs (OSX, Windows), then you have to live with the restrictions... It's as simple as that. They own the copyright on the OS, so they can tell you how they want you to use it. You can argue about the moral implications of what they do all day long, all it does is keep their name in the news...
If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good
You seem to be operating under the premise that Apple is a Software company like Microsoft. They're not. They're a hardware company like HP or Dell. That the operating system they provide with their hardware is their own creation is irrelevant, and they're under no obligation, moral or otherwise, to provide support for any platform that they didn't sell.
That they're disabling support for the Atom platform is irrelevant. They're disabling support for a platform that they don't sell. The EULA that comes with their software specifically prohibits your using that platform in the first place, so if you were using their software legitimately, it shouldn't affect you. If it does affect you, too bad.
OS X vs Ubuntu have not only entirely different target audiences but are entirely different experiences. I use XP, OSX Tiger, RHEL 5 and Fedora 8 daily but switching my laptop from OSX Tiger to Fedora or RHEL would be a huge difference in capabilities and would greatly reduce my performance -- until I found replacements for all the things I do, assuming that's possible.
And please before you tag me as not friendly to open source, I've been using Fedora since it was called Red Hat 5.2. Just make absolutely sure you are willing to put up with the change in scenery... Ubuntu tends to be a rather cutting-edge distro. Hope it works for you.
Ummm. No it doesn't. It actually means *more* bloat, albeit insignificant, because they have to explicitly check to see which CPU you are using.
There is a difference between leaving in support and explicitly disabling "support". I put support in quotes because there was never anything extra done to support atom, it just acts like a normal processor. This si like websites which look at your browsers user agent and deny you access because you are running the wrong browser, when the page would run in the blocked browser anyway.
They are not "explicitly disabling 'support'" and they were never "leaving in support." As you said, they never did anything to support Atom, and now they've coincidentally broken it. Just like when a website starts using a JavaScript function that breaks in Opera/Safari/Chrome because it was never tested on that browser.
I'm pulling this out of my nether regions, but the last slashdot article implied that they didn't "disable" Atom processors, per se. They turned on compiler optimizations that generate instructions that the Atom doesn't support.
If that's the case, it "tightens the code" because the new instructions run faster on the Intel processors Apple actually uses. However, Atom no longer works because the cheaper processors don't support those instructions.
DATABASE WOW WOW
Microsoft ended up in hot water for tying a !@#$ing BROWSER to their operating system and everyone cheered for their defeat. If Apple's market share wasn't so comparatively small, they'd be torn to shreds by the DOJ over this.
The problem is the Atom supports a similar instruction set to the standard processors.
Dropping support in this case means they are adding explicit code designed solely to prevent use on a processor the OS would otherwise work with.
And you know this how? There is zero evidence to support this. The much more likely scenario is that something simply broke compatibility with the Atom chipset, and Apple never bothered to test it and doesn't care that it's broken.
and although i repeat what hundreds have said before me, you are creating a strawman. nobody wants apple to support intel atom processors and there is no way their eula can tell me what to do with an osx cd in my own home. people who buy an osx cd and install the software on their own netbooks have done nothing morally wrong.
they are perfectly allowed to disable support for whatever they want to. i'm not saying (and i don't think anybody is saying) that apple doesn't have the right to do that. what others are saying is that it is morally questionable for apple to do so.
there is a reason why many here have mentioned intent. if apple has deliberately disabled os x from running on intel atom processors, then in the minds of most here we have a very different situation from the one if os x no longer ran on intel atom processors because of some technical reason.
in general we are arguing morals here, not law. legally i doubt that apple has done anything wrong. morally there is a very strong case to be made (which you have in no way countered) that apple has done something morally wrong.
Apple doesn't make an Atom-based Mac. Nor did they in the past. They explicitly sell and license Mac OS X to run only on Macs. If you want to try and get it to work on a non-Mac with a different CPU and/or chipset than what Apple supports, you're on your own, good luck to you.
Apple isn't going to send an army of lawyers to your house to stop you from trying to build a hackintosh. They will if you figure it out and then start selling them - see Psystar for details. But they won't do anything to make it easy for you to build a hackintosh, and if it breaks - oh well, sucks to be you, next time buy a Mac or stick to a supported OS on your hackintosh.
Me, I stick to Windows 7 Pro on my eee901 for now, but I may switch to eeebuntu soon. I like it. I'll keep Mac OS on my Macs.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
How are they obligated to ensure that their product continues to work on a processor that they do not support? Why are they obligated to ensure the OS X hackintosh community can continue installing OS X on Atom-powrred netbooks?
they aren't and they aren't. but that's not what this argument is about.
the problem is that it is a generally not nice thing to do. many people (i am not one of them, as i would not sully my hands with os x) have quite happily installed os x on intel atom powered products and (presumably) enjoyed using the hardware with this operating system. for apple to deliberately disable their systems from working is just not nice. what harm is it doing apple? why do they have to say to these (presumably hundreds if not thousands of people) "we don't like what you're doing so we're going to make sure you can't!"? it's just small-minded, egocentric behaviour which would get a reprimand if a child did it.
I'm sure you do, but your assertion that "OS X is even more locked down than Windows" is a little bit a stretch, surely. How much of the Windows source is open? How much of OS X? Clearly both are closed OSes, but the core of OS X is a lot more open than Windows.
On the second point, some citations would be nice. Apple is moaned at a lot for their contributions to the OSS community and their "theft" from it (funny, I thought it was free) especially in cases like Webkit/KHTML and Darwin itself.
So, what currently unaddressed security hole exists in the open source stuff Apple ships? Are you claiming that Apple doesn't update the OSS stuff it ships in security updates? Are you claiming they specifically ignore security holes?
What's to stop you from rolling your own implementations of these vulnerable services on OS X if they are open source and you need to run them but are concerned that the shipped Apple version is insecure, assuming that the current OSS version has also been patched, or are you claiming that because Apple doesn't push a patch down on OS X the very same day a patch to the OSS stuff is done by a third party because they may need to test it on their internal OS X builds first that they are "abysmal at keeping up to date".
What I find ironic is that there is more fuss being made about support for Atom processors than PowerPC processors, and Apple even made PowerPC based computers. Once could also complain about the lack of 68k support, but probably most people don't remember back that far.
un-ALTERED reproduction and dissimination of this IMPORTANT information is ENCOURAGED
Spare some thought on the multitude of NT 3.5 users, happily running on MIPS or Alpha, when EVIL Microsoft decided to just release NT 4.0 on Intel hardware!
Seriously, it's their product. Want to run an operating system on Atom? Make and sell one! There is a market opportunity for you to exploit instead of whining.
Apply [sic] did intentionally cripple their OS because Atoms are standard X86 instruction sets.
But what is a standard X86 instruction set? Does it include SSE3?
The Atom includes SSE3, but Intel's compilers require a special switch to generate SSE3 compatible code for the Intel Atom. So I would assume there is something "special" about SSE3 on the Atom.
So, possibility one is that Apple is explicitly saying that they want to crush these people making Hackintosh Netbooks. Possibility two is that Apple is now using instructions that are not available on the Intel Atom because they don't make an Intel Atom-based machine and would rather optimize their code for the machines that they do make.
Which one seems like it makes more sense?